The Holocaust Historiography Project

Conclusion

Here we may briefly summarize the data on Jewish war-time casualties. Contrary to the figure of over 9 million Jews in German-occupied territory put forward at the Nuremberg and Eichmann trials, it has already been established that after extensive emigration, approximately 3 million were living in Europe, excluding the Soviet Union. Even when the Jews of German occupied Russia are included (the majority of Russian Jews were evacuated beyond German control), the overall number probably does not exceed four million. Himmler’s statistician, Dr. Richard Korherr and the World Centre of Contemporary Jewish Documentation put the number respectively at 5,550,000 and 5,294,000 when German-occupied territory was at its widest, but both these figures include the two million Jews of the Baltic and western Russia without paying any attention to the large number of these who were evacuated.

However, it is at least an admission from the latter Organization that there were not even six million Jews in Europe and western Russia combined. Nothing better illustrates the declining plausibility of the Six Million legend than the fact that the prosecution at the Eichmann trial deliberately avoided mentioning the figure. Moreover, official estimates of the casualties are being quietly revised downwards. Our analysis of the population and emigration statistics, as well as the studies by the Swiss Baseler Nachrichten and Rassinier, demonstrate that it would have been simply impossible for the number of Jewish casualties to have exceeded a limit of one and a half million. Doubtless large numbers of Jewish persons did die in the course of the Second World War, but this must be seen in the context of a war that cost many millions of innocent victims on all sides. To put the matter in perspective for example, we may point out that 700,000 Russian civilians died during the siege of Leningrad and a total of 2,050,000 German civilians were killed in Allied air raids and forced repatriation after the war.

The question most pertinent to the extermination legend is, of course: how many of the 3 million European Jews under German control survived after 1945? The Jewish Joint Distribution Committee estimated the number of survivors in Europe to be only one and a half million, but such a figure is now totally unacceptable. This is proved by the growing number of Jews claiming compensation from the West German Government for having allegedly suffered between 1939 and 1945. By 1965 the number of these claimants registered with the West German Government had tripled in ten years and reached 3,375,000 (Aufbau, June 30, 1965).

Nothing could be a more devastating proof of the brazen fantasy of the Six Million. Most of these claimants are Jews, so there can be no doubt that the majority of the 3 million Jews who experienced the Nazi occupation of Europe remained, in fact, very much alive. It is a resounding confirmation of the fact that Jewish casualties during the Second World War can only be estimated at a fraction of “Six Million.” Surely this is enough grief for the Jewish people? Who has the right to compound it with vast imaginary slaughter, marking with eternal shame a great European nation, as well as wringing fraudulent monetary compensation from them?


Richard Harwood is a writer and specialist in political and diplomatic aspects of the Second World War. At present he is with the University of London. Mr. Harwood turned to the vexed subject of war crimes under the influence of Professor Paul Rassinier, to whose monumental work this little volume is greatly indebted. The author is now working on a sequel in this series on the Main Nuremberg Trial, 1945–1946.